


Lying In Wait

by Anonymous



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel (Supernatural) to the Rescue, Castiel saves Sam, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Near Drowning, Protective Castiel (Supernatural), Protective Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester Has Mental Health Issues, Tied-Up Sam Winchester, Traumatised Sam Winchester, Vengeful Dean Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-03-28
Packaged: 2019-12-25 16:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18265022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: After Sam kicks some of the refugees out for their treatment of Cas, he doesn’t think to see them again.He underestimates just how angry they are about what he did, and ends up nearly paying for it.Just as well Cas is close at hand.





	Lying In Wait

**Author's Note:**

> Just in case, Sam ends up in a rough place after what happens, and (like Cas did previously) can’t leave the bunker. But he isn’t alone; he has Cas with him, making sure he’s cared for and his needs are met.
> 
> Dean... Dean has an important job to do but knows Cas will look after Sam in the meantime.

Maybe a month after they moved in, when things had settled just enough, and they both had an idea that this might be someplace they could stay, Sam took to exploring the grounds around the bunker.

At that point, it was more about security than anything else; finding out what was at their back door, basically, and the lay of the land if they ever had to get out fast.

While he was doing it, the part of him that liked to run was doing its own little recon and noticing some paths that looked promising and kind of building a little route in his head.

It’s that route he’s taking now, the terrain making his muscles work for purchase and pace, taking him out of the woods and onto the rockier ground as he heads for the river bed.

He brought Dean up here, once, and his brother took to calling it the grotto, but lost interest after that; the only time the bed wasn’t dry was when it rained, heavy, one of those pitch black cloud downpours just drowning the area, and that didn’t come often enough to make the place a good fishing spot.

It was perfect for Sam, though, except today, looking up at the sky, he knows he has maybe an hour tops before the weather’s going to bring one of those sporadic, yet epic, deluges. It’s been threatening since last night, long overdue. 

So maybe today he’ll have to cut things short, but he’ll clear the river bed and then turn around and make his way back home.

It’s just coming in sight when he hears the crunch of a footstep behind him, and he pivots on his heel, turns fast and ready, because nobody else should be out here bar him (Dean isn’t home and Cas is going through a box of artefacts Ketch ‘liberated’ from an abandoned Letters’ station).

It doesn’t help because they’re readier than he is and something hard, harder than a fist, slams into the side of his face.

He’s rocked off balance, not helped by the ground skittering away under his feet. There’s more than one of them, just to make his situation worse, and they pile in at him, punching and kicking, and he blocks and gets a few hits in himself, but he knows it won’t change the outcome.

He’s going down, going down hard, the rocks digging into his knees and his palms, drawing blood, and then sharp as broken glass against the rest of him when he gets slammed over onto his back.

“Not so smart now, you fucker, huh,” someone says.

Sam’s vision is blurry with pain but he knows that voice, knows the bulky shape looming in over him.

“Burgess….”

He can make out a wicked grin before a fist comes flying at him and that takes him out of it for a while.

++

He comes to slowly, the pain in his head fogging up his thoughts. He remembers running and he remembers falling, but there was something inbetween, it didn’t happen just like that, and then he hears someone laughing, and a foot nudges him sharply in the side.

“We know you’re awake, Sam. Quit pretending.”

Burgess is leaning over him, and Sam rears up, still sore, feeling a little sick, but determined to knock the bastard on his ass. Him and his friends, because he remembers now.

But something tugs back against him, biting sharply into his wrists, and he falls back hard enough to drive the air out of himself.

Burgess laughs, cruel and eager. 

Sam glances to his left, and right. Whatever the fuck is going on, he doesn’t know; they’ve staked him out, his wrists and his ankles, when he can raise his head enough to check, tied down to thick metal pegs driven in deep to the river bed.

“What the hell do you want,” he pants, and Burgess isn’t grinning then.

“Guess you thought you were pretty smart, huh, you little prick,” he says. “Kicking me and my pals out of your bunker. When we had nowhere fucking else to go.”

Sam bites down on what he wants to say, that he had good reason to kick them out.

While Dean was gone, stolen by Michael, he and Cas had been left trying to cope, to hold everything together, and prop each other up, and the strain had been nearly more than they could both bear.

It was probably why Cas had let his guard down, too focused on finding Dean and caring for Sam in the meantime, to realise that some of the people the Winchesters had opened their home to meant him serious harm.

Sam had intervened in time, and left Mary to look after their angel while he kicked Burgess and his cruel friends out.

At the time, when the bastard had sworn to get his own back, Sam hadn’t paid him any mind. He was a bully, loud mouthed and pushy, but backing down fast enough when his friends decided they didn’t want to piss Sam off any more than they’d already done.

But apparently they were willing to lie in wait for him out here, catch him off guard, and then…what?

Burgess seems to be waiting for him to get it, growing impatient. He points upwards, where as Sam had suspected earlier, the dark clouds are rolling in above them.

“I remember you telling the kids,” he says, “not to be out here when the rain started. Just in case, because it filled up so fast if it got bad enough. And I think today it’s gonna be bad, Sam. Shame you can’t get up, ain’t it.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Sam says. “Burgess, don’t be an idiot. Let me go.”

“Or what,” he says. “You gonna sic your angel on me? Your big brother?” He sneers down at Sam and then steps away, scrabbling as he climbs out of the river bed.

“Burgess!” Sam yells after him. “What the hell are you doing?”

Not that he’s in any doubt. They’re actually going to leave him here, tied down at the bottom of the river bed.

He gets no answer, anyway, and then they’re gone.

Sam stares up at the sky, watches it growing darker and darker, and then the first fat drops of rain spatter down on him.

He tugs frantically at the ropes holding him but there’s no give at all; Burgess and his buddies have made sure he isn’t getting out of this one, not alone.

And he doesn’t have long if he’s going to get out of it at all.

 _Cas_ , he prays. _Cas, I’m in trouble_.

++

Cas doesn’t share Sam’s affinity for jogging; as an angel, he doesn’t require exercise, but he does find the woods behind the bunker soothing to his Grace, and so he’d sometimes wander there, and wait for Sam to return, and walk back with him while he ‘cooled down’.

So he knows exactly where Sam is, and he runs through the woods, and straight towards the younger Winchester’s location, half of him hoping he’ll bump into Burgess and his companions on the way.

But there’s no time for that; the rain’s falling in thick sheets, and within moments Cas’s hair is plastered to his head, and his clothes cling wet and heavy to his body.

He has to get to Sam _now_.

He breaks out of the trees, starts towards the rockier ground that will lead him to where Sam’s trapped.

The rain is falling harder, like it has a will to stop him, but it’s nothing to an angel. He keeps his purchase, doesn’t waste valuable seconds slipping or falling and then he doesn’t need prayers because he can hear Sam screaming for him.

He sees the river bed just a few metres ahead, forges through the last of the distance, and leaps.

The water is already over ankle deep to him, and he sees in horror that a few more inches of the torrent will cover Sam completely.

And he can’t move, can’t get himself any higher above the water level because he’s tied down.

Cas knows hate; he’s felt it burn through him, and it’s mostly been when someone has threatened, or hurt, his family.

That, and the utter rage burning inside him, he has to push aside. He’ll find their outlet later. Right now, saving Sam is more important than avenging this cruelty.

He drops to his knees beside the bound man, and puts one hand carefully at the nape of Sam’s neck, holding his head a little higher out of the water, and reaches for the first steel peg with his other hand.

It doesn’t resist his strength at all, comes free and with it the ropes. That lets Sam sit further up on his own, out of immediate danger, and Cas quickly frees his other hand, and both his legs.

He grabs Sam, gets him to his feet, and half carries him up the bank, and onto safe ground.

Sam’s staring, wide eyed, at where he was trapped moments below, as the water rises above where he was tied down.

He had run out of time.

Cas guides him gently back, turns him away.

He knows better than to let Sam dwell on what ifs. And Sam’s freezing, shaking, though Cas knows that could be more than him being soaked through.

His clothes are as well, so he can’t even offer Sam his coat.

But they’ll soon be back at the bunker, and Cas hurries Sam as much as he dares.

He wants Sam inside, and safe, and warm, and healed of any injuries.

And then, then they can deal with the people who did this to him.

++

Burgess is very careful, these days. He doesn’t go anywhere alone. He changes jobs, and motels frequently, and sticks to public transport. Doesn’t own anything that will leave a trail for a certain person to follow.

Because he knows Dean’s out there.

The other guys who were with him that day, Burgess figures they’re dead now. 

They split up, once they’d calmed down, and realised what shit they’d probably brought down on themselves. 

Dean Winchester and his fucking angel, who’d probably scour the whole damn planet to find them.

Word reaches them that Sam lived, rescued by the angel, and that it’s Dean who’s out searching for them.

The others stop keeping in touch with him one, by one, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out why.

But it’s even three months, and Burgess figures by now Dean’s probably given up.

He rattles the motel room door, finds it still locked, and lets himself in, kicks off his shoes, slumps to sit on the bed and open the six pack he grabbed on the way home.

Yeah, he’s okay, now.

Even Dean Winchester has to give up eventually.

++

Cas knocks once on Sam’s door, and then comes in when he hears Sam call to him.

He hates that Sam’s confidence has taken such a knock, but he remembers after the spell, what it was like, feeling only safe within the bunker’s walls.

Feeling like only there were you in an environment you could control.

So he knows Sam will come through this, in time.

He did, and Sam has them, and now he doesn’t have to worry about the reason he’s sequestered himself in their home in the first place.

”Dean wants to speak to you,” Cas tells him, and holds out his phone.

He retreats, closing the door quietly behind him.

Perhaps tomorrow, Sam will want to walk a little way around the bunker. Maybe even a small jog.

And Cas willl go with him.


End file.
